


In The Garden

by JustOnlyGinger



Series: Carnival [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Banjos, Folk Rock, Gangbang, M/M, Misappropriating Hymns, Public Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 06:45:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4128678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustOnlyGinger/pseuds/JustOnlyGinger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One severely charismatic banjo player strolls among the wreckage of the former world in the twilight of civilization, speaking so sweetly that the birds hush their singing and appointing himself the master and benefactor of any promising-looking piece of flotsam he happens across.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"And He walks with me and He talks with me,  
And He tells me I am His own,  
And the joy we share as we tarry there,  
None other has ever known."

C. Austin Miles, 1913

 

 

The worst part about this whole situation, Cole thinks, is that the concrete post his chain is attached to stands slightly below the tideline, so that he spends a good deal of time treading water. Freezing his ass off, scraped raw by the rough sand, salt water seeking out every tiny cut or abrasion on his skin and setting it on fire. He supposes he's been staked out here to die, but he stubbornly refuses to. No one's fed him; there are edicts against providing food or clothing or any sort of comfort to the Carnival's sacrificial fools, but Cole subsists well enough on crabs and mussels and seaweed and whatever rotten fruit Caratacus' revelers hurl at him in passing.

Actually- Cole amends his thoughts-- the worst part is the loneliness, long nights when the fires on the shore are banked high and no one comes to visit him, when black night turns into bleary dawn and bleeds into daylight again and he suffers it without a single touch. Knowing there are hundreds of people within shouting distance, too busy laughing and dancing and eating and fighting and fucking to come pay their respects to him here on his lonesome spit of sand, doesn't make him feel any better.

One day, he wakes from a distinctly unrestful sleep to find Caratacus himself making his way towards him across the beach, looking very hungry and humorless. He stops before Cole, and Cole watches the impressions his boots have made in the sand slowly fill with water.

“You hear that, Whitcher?” he says. He cocks his head in the direction of the shacks and the bonfire circles, and Cole does hear loud laughter, singing, whoops of exultation. “We're celebrating up there. It's a party, and you're invited.” He takes a strip of dark cloth from inside his jacket and binds it around Cole's head with great gentleness and care, covering his eyes, and Cole has little choice but to keep them closed against the unpleasant coarseness of the material. He tries to speak, but finds it impossible, as if his tongue is frozen or his throat paralyzed. Caratacus, as usual, does enough talking for both of them as he unfastens Cole's chain and leads him up the beach and over the dunes, closer to the sounds of wild merriment and the warmth of the tall fires that are always burning.

“There's the whore,” someone shouts; other voices join in, hoarse with joyous vulgarity.

“Cocksucker!”

“Want me to split that scrawny ass open, faggot?”

“All right, baby, you got a nice wet cunt for me?”

Caratacus is gentle with Cole, guiding him into a kneeling position someplace where he can feel the fire's warmth on his skin; he prickles all over with pleasure, shudders gratefully in its glow. He still can't speak, feels as if someone's placed a heavy stone on his tongue, and Caratacus is locking some unwieldy apparatus around him, pinioning him in place with metal bars.

When the first cock enters him, Cole feels only gratitude. Thank you, he would say if he could speak. Thank you for seeing me, touching me, acknowledging that I still have something to offer you. Thank you for the approval of your flesh, hard and thick and stiff, thank you for making use of my body as if it belonged to you.

“Fuck,” the man's grunting, “love this whore, gonna fucking come in his loose sloppy cunt, oh god, give it to him good--”

“Let him have it!”

The man comes inside him with a yell of triumph, and the onlookers cheer. Cole can feel their eyes on him, can imagine what they see, his starved body bound and naked in the firelight. He's losing day by day what once made him a fairly attractive man; his skin shriveling, flesh shrinking against the bone, muscles going flaccid from confinement. His hair's falling out too, in clumps, and when it grows again it's snow-white.

“What we've got here is a real first-quality slut,” Caratacus is saying; his freezing-cold fingers alight on the back of Cole's neck, stroke it gently. “Can't get enough of it, lives to suck cock, takes gallons of come down his throat. Wanna see what else he can do? Ladies and gents, step right up, this one is yours for the fucking.”

“I'll take a turn.” Cole recognizes the voice as belonging to one James McKinley, an ox drover from down South with a long stork body and kind blue eyes and the brightest grin that's ever shone on this forsaken shore. Jim, there are rumors about him, weird ones, he's supposed to be able to do magic, to change himself into a bird or a snake or a long-necked horse with a golden mane and tail. He can make dead trees burst into blossom, rivers flow backward, rocks melt, time stand still. Cole knows, of course, that all of this is bullshit, but he privately longs for the handsome and charismatic Jim, wants to belong to him instead of Caratacus' collective.

“Whoa there, pretty boy,” Jim's saying. His hands are on Cole's sides, as warm as Caratacus' were cold. “It's gonna be all right. You'll have a bit of a rough time of it, but you'll come through it fine.” Cole wishes he could speak, wishes he could beg Jim for his hand, for his collar, for his love in whatever shape it might take. He's seen the slaves who belong to Jim, and they're perfectly ordinary, a little ragtag even. Cole might fit in among them. Cole could be what Jim's looking for, why he's traveled all this way.

“Jim,” he finally manages to croak out; his body is stiffening in its awkward position, his hands curled tightly into fists. “It's you. It's you, isn't it.”

“Just me, beautiful.” Jim hasn't started fucking him yet, but he can take as long as he likes; his exalted position means that no one is permitted to be impatient with him. “I'm here with you, Whitcher. I can stay here, keep an eye on you tonight.” Cole nearly passes out with gratitude, and then he feels Jim's cock bumping inquisitively against his side, trailing over his skin, seeking entrance. The jeering crowd has fallen silent, and Cole can imagine them all standing in regimented rows and watching respectfully like worshipers in a church.

“You understand, don't you? You see how they try to humiliate you. These people think you're worthless because of what you once were. They're the same as the people who locked you up in the first place, but they have no power. There's no prison here, they can't put you behind bars again.” Jim is monologuing directly into Cole's ear, his good one, because apparently Jim knows that much about him; could be a lucky guess, but Cole is willing to bet he knows.

“I'm trapped,” Cole says, his voice still refusing to rise above a whimper. Jim has eased his cock in and begun to move slowly, each languid thrust drawing a gasp from Cole's raw throat. It feels good, better and closer and warmer than the first man; better, obviously, than Caratacus, who's barely more than a boy and doesn't have a damn idea what he's doing.

“You were trapped, pretty thing. Now you're free.”

“I'm not free. I won't be, ever.”

“Now, now. Nonsense. Shh now, don't fret.” Jim's still soothing and shushing as he finishes inside Cole; then he's gone, and Cole doesn't know where he is, and then he's touching Cole again, crouched at his side, breathing softly. Without the use of his eyes, Cole feels like a bat, bouncing chirps of sonar off the immobile objects around him, all the people standing around muttering ominously amongst themselves like groves of trees in a cemetery.

As the night progresses, Jim does, as he promised, stay at Cole's side; stroking his hair and murmuring reassurances as someone whips his ass raw with a length of wire, taking time to touch up his cock and balls as well; humming softly to him as he strains to keep himself from collapsing into unconsciousness, as cock after cock batters against him, as man after man steps forward to bestow his gift on Cole's defenseless body. Some of them come inside him, while others let their cooling fluid spatter against his back and ass; at some point somebody stands in front of him and starts fucking his mouth, and he can't hear Jim's voice over the blood rushing in his ears.

At last it's over, and Caratacus rattles his chain free and unlocks the bars that keep him secured in his kneeling position. He leads Cole away from Jim, away from the fires and the lights and the sounds of merriment, away from all the music and warmth and life and back to his concrete post rising out of about two inches of rising seawater. He hitches Cole up again, and Cole has no choice but to lie there, utterly exhausted, the shallow water washing around him and carrying away the sweat and blood and spunk crusted on his skin. Like a great tongue lapping, the ocean washes him clean, and finally- at last, he's been dreaming of this since he woke this morning-- he sleeps. No dreams, just silence and moonlight and the muffled voice of the tide carrying him in and out and in and out into the small hours of the morning. Cole sleeps blessedly, remembering Jim's hands on him, Jim's perfect cock in him, Jim's voice surrounding him like the waters of the gentle sea.

When Cole wakes, he's alone, as usual. It's a gray morning, the ocean flat and dull as a cement floor, the clouds low, white flashes of gulls' wings skimming through them. He tries for a long time to fall asleep again, tries not to know what he knows or see what he sees, tries to forget everything; but it's impossible, and Caratacus has taken up permanent residence inside him, presiding over his thoughts and desires and memories.

“Fuck off,” Cole says, more or less to himself. To his own loneliness, to the empty sky and sea and beach that stretch off in every direction; unrelieved desolation, and here he is in the middle of it, naked and disgraced and chained to a concrete post knee-deep in icy seawater.

Then, like something out of a dream, Jim's tall quick-striding figure appears on the crest of a dune and moves swiftly towards him; Cole doesn't even try to keep himself from staring, is practically quivering with gratitude and admiration by the time Jim actually steps into the radius of his chain. He hates this about himself, how, in times of great adversity, he pathetically attaches his affections to whoever treats him least like shit. It's himself he hates, of course, and Jim he loves, Jim's praise he lives for, Jim's attention he strives to attract.

“Good morning, beautiful.” Jim's standing in the water, his white trousers rolled to the knee, freezing water lapping at his white ankles. “See, I told you you'd be all right.”

“You're pretty smart, from what I've heard. How does anything about these circumstances strike you as 'all right'?”

“Look at you.” Jim grins, reaches down to ruffle Cole's hair. “You were meant to die, and you're alive. That's success at its finest. That's the culmination of billions of years of evolution. You wanted to live, so you found a way. That's something to be proud of.”

“Cut the shit,” Cole says, then wishes he could take it back, but Jim only laughs, brightly, tilting his brilliant white throat to the sun. He's already shaved and showered and impeccably dressed at this dull early hour of the morning, while Cole has gone so long without clothes that he's all but forgotten to be ashamed of his nudity.

“Smart little thing, aren't you? How did you know I'm full of shit?”

“I'm not really smart.”

“Smart enough to know which side your bread's buttered on, which is all someone in your position really needs to know. I can get you out of Caratacus' pocket, kid, but I need you to help me.” Cole's entire body flushes hot enough to turn the icy seawater to steam, and his heart stutters wildly in his chest. Jim wants him. Jim can save him, negotiate for his freedom. Jim can get him out of here, Jim is present and willing and waiting to help.

“How are you going to do that?”

“Wait and see.” Jim rummages in a satchel slung over his shoulder, removes a vaguely square cloth-wrapped bundle and a cylindrical plastic drink thermos of the type that used to be very common before the Invasion. “Would you like the things I've brought for you?”

“Food.”

“Jam tart and tea.” Jim nods, removes the lid from the thermos and passes it into Cole's numbed and shaking hands. “Careful, it's hot. Don't drink it too fast.”

“What do you want from me? How am I going to pay you?”

“Eat and drink, and we'll work something out.” Cole obeys with only the dimmest spike of apprehension, filling his mouth with the crumbling buttery-tasting tart and washing each bite down with long swallows of the hot dark tea. He's never tasted anything better, he knows that much.

“That's real butter in there,” Jim says. “From the boss' own cows. Nothing's too good for him. None of that oily synthetic stuff, no sir.”

“Of course,” Cole grunts, mouth stuffed full, crumbs flying everywhere. When he's devoured the whole thing, he takes a long swallow of tea and looks up at Jim pleadingly, his throat still working, his tongue still searching the corners of his mouth for every last crumb. Jim reaches towards him, takes his chin in hand and tilts his face up so that Cole has no choice but to keep looking at him; he knows he's staring now, eyes dull and uncomprehending, mouth slackly open, only one thought in his head: to somehow gain more of Jim's favors, to win every bit of sustenance that he possibly can.

“Lovely, wasn't it?” Jim says. He releases Cole, and Cole hangs his head down. He hugs himself, twitching and shivering; he's cold and tired and sore, his ass still smarting from the beating he'd received last night. He wishes Jim would stop playing with him, suspects he's being strung along at this point, that Jim has no real intentions of delivering him from his torturers.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Cole asks him. “Come on, just tell me. I have no pride left. You know that much.”

“Do nothing,” Jim says, “for now. Remain exactly where you are, exactly what you are. Bide your time.”

“That's all? Just wait? What the fuck am I supposed to do? I can't live like this. You said yourself. I'm supposed to die. Caratacus, he'll- he'll get bored with me and have me executed. This isn't what you'd call a real sustainable arrangement. I'll drown one of these days, if I don't starve or freeze to death. Or die of sleep deprivation.”

“You've been deprived before. You've survived. You're tough as nails, kid.” Jim passes a hand over Cole's hair again; it's growing long, rough and untrimmed, thick with tangles. Jim's wearing a pale orange wool coat and he opens it and removes a flat glass bottle of amber liquor from an inside pocket.

“Drink this,” he says. “Stay warm and survive a little longer.” Cole doesn't argue, just swallows when Jim tilts the bottle into his mouth. He nurses on it like a calf, closing his eyes, feeling life and strength and gorgeous warmth suffuse his every cell. For the first time he feels as if maybe Jim is right; maybe he's come this far for a reason. Maybe he is tough. Maybe he can survive. Maybe, he thinks, maybe his life shouldn't have ended in that hospital after all.

“Hang tight, kid. I'll be back.” Jim is gone as suddenly and ceremoniously as he arrived, but Cole doesn't mind being alone again. He keeps seeing Jim's face, his creased forehead and kind blue eyes. Jim's smile, bright white, never a stain or a snag, not a single chip or flaw. Jim has the face of a man who was meant to rule his lessers, who's come to kingship as his birthright.

Another dreary day passes; Cole watches the sun, but it never quite seems to rise, and before long it's gone again and dusk turns the beach to charcoal dust and the sea to a restless mass of shadows. He's hungry and tired and cold, colder than he's ever been in his life, colder than he'd ever thought his body would be able to stand. It was high summer when he was captured and brought to Caratacus as an inconsequential amusement, but now the days are growing shorter. The nights are longer and colder than before, and there's a suspicious whiff of frost in the air. Cole knows he can't survive this if it goes on much longer. He knows it without much in the way of emotion, with only a certain sense of bitter finality. If that's how he ends, then so be it. It seems like all he's ever known of life is being captured; encagement of one kind or another.

Caratacus, it seems, no longer has much use for him. He's really been left here to rot this time, can't remember the last time he heard a human voice. There are no shouts, no jeers, no insults or vulgar suggestions. No one's thrown a rotten apple at him in days. Isolated, he nestles into himself to wait out this pain. Nothing will hurt anymore when he's dead.

“Hey, you there. Hey kid.” Cole blinks, discovers he lacks the necessary muscle control to be able to keep his eyes open, and lets them droop closed again. He realizes he's still breathing. He can hear it, raspy and loud in the infinite silence that seems to contain nothing but himself and Jim. His body trembles, shakes, jitters compulsively, contracts a thousand times a second with shivers that, as with his eyes, he can do nothing to control.

“I'm sorry it took me so long. Here.” Jim throws a blanket over him, and Cole remains too stunned for gratitude. Too little, too late, he thinks; in some dim untenanted corridor of his mind lurks the unwelcome thought that he hasn't been saved by Jim's kindness, that this is some kind of delusion born of cold and hunger and lethargy and fear. It has all the signs of a fever dream; even the weather is suddenly glorious, the sun burning high above a flat and gleaming green sea, not a cloud on the horizon.


	2. Chapter 2

“I don't get it,” Cole says. “Why did you come back?” He's not dreaming, he knows now. He's never been able to speak in his dreams.

“I thought that I might need you.” Crouching down beside Cole in the damp hard-packed sand of the tideline, Jim lays his head to one side and eyes him critically. “Yeah, you look like the sort of thing I could use. Young enough. Pretty, but not too pretty. Dark hair, blue eyes, kind of striking. Your ears stick out a little, but there's no help for that, I suppose.”

“I don't get it,” Cole says again; he'd apologize for being such an idiot, but his brain is frozen as solid as the rest of him. With surprising strength, Jim grasps him under the arms and raises him to his feet, rattling the long chain still looped slackly around his neck. Cole is amazed that he's able to stand on his nerveless legs; he hasn't been able to feel his feet in he doesn't know how long. He sways a little, leans on Jim's shoulder as Jim removes a little silver key from the pocket of his coat and unlocks the heavy padlock hanging from his chain. He pockets both the key and the lock and lets the loose chain fall to the ground, and Cole is speechless with gratitude, trying to raise his hands to rub at his neck where it's been chafed by the cold metal but finding that it's strangely impossible.

“Don't worry,” says Jim, and claps him jovially on the back. “Everything's gonna be all right, friend.”

Jim, august personage that he is, occupies his own snug little cabin set back from the main rioting grounds of the Carnival in a small grove of silver birch trees whose leaves are just starting to turn to glimmering gold. Cole is astounded by their beauty; they're so lovely that they seem to breathe, to dance, to resonate with life, graceful and unknowable.

Inside the cabin, Jim primes the water pump and starts to fill the tub; a real one, thick white porcelain, stunningly clean and whole and resting on four stout clawed feet. Cole lets the blanket fall from his shoulders at Jim's request, then begins the complicated ordeal of climbing into the tub, during which he relies on Jim's strength much more than suits whatever small amount of pride he has left.

“I'm going to tame you,” Jim announces. “My friend, I'm going to bring you back to yourself. I'm going to make you better than you've ever been, you'll see. Trust me, kid.”

“I don't need to be tamed.” Cole's voice is dull in his own ears, unaccustomed and rusty. His throat, he realizes suddenly, is so sore that it feels as if it's on fire.

“Sure, you're a domesticated creature. By birth at least, if not by inclination, but no one's ever taken you in hand and taught you what you need to know. You may not be wild, but your education is certainly lacking, isn't it?”

“I don't know.” Cole believes he understands Jim's intentions less with every word that passes between them; but he has no choice but to trust Jim. Trust Jim, or get thrown back into the ocean, this time as a feast for the crabs and seagulls.

“Well, of course. You just need to be instructed, that's all. You need someone to look after you, attend to your needs, raise you up into a proper--”

“A what? What am I supposed to be anyway? You're talking about me like I'm an animal.” Jim pauses, looking blank for a moment, mouth half-open and perfect teeth glinting in the golden autumn sunlight.

“Well, you are an animal. We all are. Each and every one of us. And we all need the proper handling if we're to become what we're meant to be.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. I think you're crazy.”

“Now then, boy. None of that.” Jim's rolling up his sleeves, crouching to turn off the tap as the water threatens to overflow. “Bet that feels nice on your old bones. Nice hot water for a change, you like it, don't you?” Cole nods dumbly, submits to being lathered and scrubbed and gently tugged this way and that by Jim's bare strong hands. White and muscular and slender, smooth skin, short nails; Jim's hands are as improbably perfect as the rest of him, and they move gently over Cole's body, leave no aspect of it untouched.

“I've been where you were, you know. Just where you were. Chained to a concrete post in the rising tide, up to my ass in freezing-cold seawater. I'm from Louisiana, kid. I couldn't deal with that shit. I didn't even know what snow was, never saw cold, didn't know it could feel like that. August on the great north shore, but the world became arctic to me. Ice floes and icy sea and treeless desolation. I thought I would die, but I lived somehow. Like you. I wouldn't let these assholes kill me.”

“Caratacus.” Cole stands, his body somehow renewed, suffused with warmth and strength. He accepts a folded towel from Jim, dries himself the way he always does, as if stepping out of a perfectly private and ordinary bath; hair first, then chest and back, then crotch, then up and down each of his legs.

“Everly. Ever wonder who he is? What he's doing here?”

“Well, yeah.” Cole flinches from Jim's hands as they slather lotion on his scrubbed skin. Too cold, and he's too sensitive, can't stand to be touched, especially not so lovingly; for some reason, Jim touches him as if he finds him beautiful.

“No use wondering who the bastard is. He got lucky. The big lizards did all his fighting for him.”

“Luck of the draw. That's how it's always been.”

“Smart boy. In a way, our Sarxie friends are a metaphor. Serve, or be devoured. The system's never been so easy to understand. Come on, kid. Tired, aren't you? Remember the last time you slept in a bed? Don't remember, do you. Months ago. I remember, I know what it's like to tread water and shiver all night long. Sleep deprivation, barely having the strength to breathe, not knowing how to go on living but knowing there's no other option. It was like that, wasn't it? That's how it was for you. It's over now. Shh, go on. You can rest.” Cole tunes out Jim's rambling; he's right, the mean little mattress on the floor is wonderfully soft and comfortable. Faded threadbare blankets, rough clean material, musty smells of wool and earth. This is heaven, Cole thinks to himself. That's the only thing I can call it. Being this warm, this dry, this safe after this long.

Cole wakes the next morning, disoriented, with no recollection of having fallen asleep the night before and no idea why his body is suddenly surrounded by warm softness; something like blankets, a real mattress, a bed. He raises his head cautiously, looks around at the bare white walls, the small square windows with bare white light falling through them. A longhaired gray cat snoozes at the foot of his bed; a weathered seaman's chest and an improbably lofty winged chair of audacious mid-century design are the only other furniture. The door creaks open, there's a gust of unseasonably raw autumn wind, and a woman in a long skirt enters. Cole recognizes her vaguely, knows he's seen her somewhere before; beside some bonfire, flame and shadow making a fabulous mask of her face. It's an unusual face, long-nosed and drawn-out and not especially pretty, with dark eyes and thick brows and high cheeks and an obscenely moody full-lipped mouth.

The woman-- he can't remember her name, she belongs to Jim somehow, same as the others- kneels down beside him and presses a cold hand to his heart. Cole yelps and jerks away instinctively, and she looks at him with puzzlement and strange patience and feels for his pulse again.

“You're all right,” she tells him. “Your heartbeat is the same.”

“How do you know?”

“I checked your signs last night.” She stands, turns away from him, opens the chest under the window and starts to paw through it, looking for something. “You're dehydrated from being staked out there so long without any drinking water.” This sounds plausible; Cole doesn't feel different, but then, he's used to dragging himself wretchedly through day after inhospitable day, and sleep brings very little relief. He doesn't remember what it's like to be perfectly lucid, wide awake and capable. Now that he's come to rest here, in this bed, in this safe little square cabin, all he really wants to do is sleep.

The woman, as Cole watches, pulls her shirt over her head, baring her long brown back; her chest Cole can see reflected in the window glass, her breasts smooth and plump and dark with the loveliest little brown nipples. Cole notes all this distantly, without the slightest flicker of arousal; it's as if he doesn't even have a cock anymore, and that sort of unnerves him. It's then that he realizes that the woman is Jim's wife, someone else he hauled dripping and shivering from the shallow waters of the inlet. She was a slave, and Jim found her and married her, made her something else.

“I know you,” Cole says; the woman, busy arranging her hair in a rude sort of braid, doesn't look at him. “You're Grey. Jim's Grey. His wife.” And he must be seeing things, because somehow her hair is emerald green, without the look of having been dyed; no fading, no inconsistencies, no hints of more natural color growing in near the scalp. She came from the water, must be some sort of siren or mermaid. A selkie, a kelpie, something sleek and hidden and dangerous that lurks just beneath the waves and waits for men's hearts to steal.

“I am his wife.” The woman, her back still turned, takes some sort of thick shapeless garment from the chest and pulls it over her head. When she does turn to face him again, Cole is dazzled by her mirage-shimmering image, the beauty that seems to emanate from her like warmth, the contrast of her green hair set against the clear jewel-blue of the heavy wool sweater draped across her shoulders. She's as powerful as Jim is, in her way; not merely a slave girl, Cole sees that now. The gaze of her dark eyes is heavy where it rests on him, and he's still tired. Maybe, if he's patient, if he demonstrates that he's ready to obey his masters' directives, Grey will tell him what to do.

“Are you warm enough?” she asks him. “Are you comfortable? You need to rest. Your body needs to mend itself.” She does a strange thing then: Grey lowers herself onto the mattress beside him, curls up on top of the covers with her back against Cole's and the gray cat tucked into the hollow of her bent legs. Three bodies sharing the same small space; Cole hasn't felt closeness like this since he was a little kid bundled into bed with all three of his brothers and sisters. He's slept alone for most of his life, in narrow iron-railed hospital beds, then on packed dirt floors, cement bunks in smelly prisons. He's amazed at how casually Grey lay down beside him, as if she doesn't fear him at all, as if she isn't disgusted, as if she has no idea what he was.

Cole dreams then, dreams that he's wandering the halls of the red-brick building where he spent the harrowing early years of his adulthood. They'd diagnosed him with everything in the book, called him a retard, condemned him to a life of sedatives and small rooms and all-too-infrequent smoke breaks. He walks, alone and barefoot, his footsteps echoing in brown-tiled canyons, faint dripping and creaking noises coming from somewhere in the sterile vastness of the old brick pile. It was a picturesquely Gothic place, bats in the belfry, turrets spindling into the sky. The roof always leaked when it rained. There were rose gardens, years abandoned, choked with vines and overrun with root-spreading weeds, dandelions sprouting in the cracks between paving stones.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter Watts. (That's both a description of what happened, and advice you should never ever follow.)

Cole wakes up wanting red meat and cigarettes more than he's ever wanted anything in his life; a bison steak, a burger grilled rare and juicy, a goddamn hot dog. For the first time in a long time, he's not too cold and tired and miserable to be starving. His head hurts, and the woman and the cat have left his bed. A glass lamp is burning oil on top of the chest, and the light outside the windows is gray and fading. He can smell smoke, burning leaves, what he hopes are cooking fires. He spends a great deal of time trying to prop himself up in bed, abandons the project when he develops a deep and persistent ache along the entire length of his spine.

Then, for many long and watchful minutes, Cole finds himself suspended in that dim state between sleep and waking, where he can see what's going on around him but can't quite credit that he isn't dreaming it. The woman- Jim's Grey-- returns, and someone else is with her. Another woman, small and narrow with long dark hair. The two of them lay down parcels, take off their coats, turn up the oil-burning lamp; then Cole wakes, really wakes, with a jolt, and he's alone again. Someone's left food for him- a cracked ceramic bowl full of something wet and woodsy-smelling-- on the large wooden spool serving as a nightstand. He can hear the rain now, gusts of it drumming against the walls and roof of the little cabin, which stands secure as a beacon; a little lighthouse on the dreary gray shore.

Cole drinks down his supper, which he judges to be some kind of creamy chickeny soup full of rice and mushrooms, and drowses off practically as soon as he sets the bowl down again. This time when he wakes up, there's someone in his bed; a heavy, decadent, feminine smell clings around them, silky and improbable, like wet flower petals.

Whoever it is stirs slightly, groans delicately, rolls onto her back. There's the dark hair he'd glimpsed before, a wild tangle obscuring the face. A single round freckled shoulder is visible where the covers have fallen away. A pale round neck, a sweet divot of collarbone. It's the woman from earlier, the one who'd been here with Grey, and Cole is gratified to realize that he wasn't dreaming her. She's under the blankets, naked beside him; more of Jim's kindness extended, but Cole is still lucid enough to wonder if it's some sort of test. He's not the kind to rape a woman, not even a slave, and usually things like this appear in his path for the sole purpose of tempting him. The idea is to resist; he's been resisting, gritting his teeth and biting down on his desires, all his life, but still seems to fail more tests than he passes.

“Wake up,” Cole mutters; he feels the sleeping woman stir next to him. She shifts, rolls again, ends up on her side facing him, still mostly covered by her hair. Then there's a long drawn-out disruption, a crackling in the atmosphere, a stench, and a man's voice grumbling “fuck, man, sorry about that.”

“What?” The word's out of his mouth-- a lot louder and more accusatory than he'd planned- before Cole can think, but he still lacks the energy to sit up, or even to open his eyes more than halfway and get a proper look at his bedmate. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Just me.” More groaning, some settling noises, another flutter of escaping gas. Cole can see one closed eye through the curtain of hair; part of a nose, the corner of a curvaceous red mouth, soft and peaceful in repose.

“Are you a woman? Am I supposed to fuck you?”

“I'm Watts.”

“You're what?”

“Jenner Caron Watts. You can call me Watts.” The stranger flings aside the bedcovers and rises up on his knees, preening at his long dark hair. In the low moody lamplight, still peering through half-closed eyelids, Cole gets an impression of a series of restful curves. Padded thighs, arched hips, soft little swag of belly fat. Watts' hair falls over his chest, all but concealing his-- well, somehow, in clever imitation of a woman, he's managed to grow himself a pair of tits.

“That's it, Mac, get yourself an eyeful.” Watts' grin is crazed and crooked and not at all unappealing as he swings the hair off his shoulders and displays himself, mounding those small sweet breasts together with his hands. He thumbs his own nipples, bites his lip, lays his head to one side and peers at Cole through narrowed eyes. His plump freckled thighs are spread now, showing the rather large quantity of bristly hair between them, and, indistinct in the midst of it, his cock.

“Seriously, what the fuck are you supposed to be?”

“The big guy thought you could use some comforting. I'm supposed to comfort you, actually.”

“All you're doing so far is confusing me.” Cole is weak, his muscles strained and stringy, not quite sure what to do with themselves now that they're no longer obligated to wring him out with constant full-body shivers. His cock still doesn't remember anything, would prefer to lie flaccid and untouched between his legs until the next time he needs it to take a piss.

“Sorry. I know you don't feel great right now. You probably don't feel up to much fucking, do you?” Strangely enough for one of the Carnival's slave-courtesans, or whatever the fuck he is, Watts seems disappointed; like he really wants Cole to ride him, to bruise that magnificently plump ass with the insistent rubbing and chafing of the collection of bones that are practically all there is to him.

“Wait. Who's the 'big guy'?”

“Jim. He's our guy. Bought me off a goat herder down South.”

“Jim... so what makes him think I'd want to fuck you?”

“You're pretty queer, Mac.”

“That so?”

“He said you got hard when he was fucking you in the ass.” Watts relates this bit of intelligence with no prurient interest whatsoever, with the verbal equivalent of a shrug, as if what Cole's been through (is still going through, is about to go through) couldn't possibly be of less significance to him.

“Anyway, who gives a shit? Plenty of guys who aren't queer like to fuck me. Turn me around so you can't see my face or my dick, pull my hair and slap my ass, what's the difference, right?” At Watts' mention of ass-slapping, Cole does feel a tiny traitorous surge of something that might be arousal. With a great deal of effort, he hauls himself upright, manages to prop his creaking back against the wall behind the bed.

“That's right,” Watts says. “Want some of this, don't you? You're gonna get it. Get it good, get what you want. I'm the best at it, Mac, I'll do you any way you want.”

“What are you talking about?” Cole tries not to let out any actual cries of pain as he eases one hand down towards his dick, but as it happens, every movement still hurts. Watts doesn't seem fazed, though, seems poised to swoop down on him, his eyes wide as he stares at Cole's bared midsection. Cole's protruding ribs, sunken belly, the ridges of muscle on his thighs; all of him indecently exposed, unprotected by cushioning fat.

“Jeez. Pretty skinny, aren't you?” Watts moves towards Cole, straddles him with utmost caution, lowers his ass smotheringly over Cole's poor limp cock. “Can you get it up, Mac? Is this gonna work?” He sways back and forth, rubs himself on Cole's lap like a very enthusiastic but unpracticed stripper, his lower lip snagged between his teeth and his own prick rising effortlessly from its tangled nest of hair. Cole is jealous of this creature, resents him a little; how can Watts possibly be so happy with what his life has become?

“It's all right. You don't have to fuck me.” Watts is swaying over him, all his loose flesh jiggling and bouncing, his hair swinging mesmerizingly from side to side as he moves to some rhythm that only he recognizes. “You can go back to sleep. I like sleeping with you.”

“You're real, aren't you?” Cole says, somewhat dazed, still unsure what exactly he's awakened to. “You really want me to—”

“Whatever you want. That's why I'm here. I'm here to serve and everything, when's the last time you had someone do that? Look, I know I'm not a woman but I'll still do whatever you want. Think about it. Won't that be nice?”

“I'm sorry,” Cole says, and repeats, until Watts, looking somewhat chastened, dismounts from him and lies down once more at his side. “God, you know, I'm really sorry, I just can't do this. I don't know who you are. I can't do this to you.”

“It's all right.” Watts looks sort of concerned now, his dark eyes shining with what might be the beginnings of tears. “You don't have to. Come on, I'm not gonna make you do anything. It's just, Jim, he thought I could help. That maybe you'd feel better if you-- come on, let me...” Watts is attached to him, permanently, Cole would guess. Clinging to him like a limpet, both arms around his neck, legs tangled up with his.

“You can't live without touch, you know. I've tried. People can't do it. They dry up, curl in on themselves and die.”

“You really want to touch me?”

“Yeah. Shh.”

“You don't know me.”

“I've seen you before. I know who you are. Anyway, why do you give a shit? I get to like who I like. Give whatever I want to whoever I want.”

“I didn't think Jim would like that. Aren't you supposed to belong to him?”

“Jim's not my daddy,” Watts announces; as if Cole has the slightest idea what that's supposed to mean.

“He's lending you out, isn't he? Don't you have a problem with that?”

“Shut up and let me suck your dick.” There's a flurry of movement below the bedcovers, and Cole feels a warm wet mouth dragging hard on him, a smooth little hand curved tight around his cock. Another hand snatches at his balls, a little more enthusiastically than he might have liked, but he can't feel any pain with Watts sucking him like that. It's good and deep and slick and maybe a little terrifying, as Cole barely remembers what coming feels like and at first he's afraid that his internal organs are trying to escape through the floor of his abdominal cavity.

Watts emerges, panting and triumphant, and reaches over to turn down the lamp, but not before Cole gets a good look at him; all his warm spotted flesh, every inch of him covered in brightly blushing freckles. If he catches Cole looking, he doesn't say anything, but damn does he seem satisfied as he nestles under the blankets, easing his body up against Cole's, draping a warm arm around him and letting his head nod forward to rest on Cole's shoulder.

“You're pretty good at that,” Cole concedes; Watts squirms delightedly against him, heaving a long slow sigh that scorches the back of Cole's neck.

“Thanks, Mac. I bet I can find out what you're good at, too.”

“It's gonna be a while.”

“Yeah. Jim says you're being rehabilitated.” Watts yawns, twitches, settles; it's a strange sensation, his hair brushing Cole's bare skin. Only now does he notice that it's cold and slightly damp, as if Watts has recently been ducked underwater.

“Better men have tried.” Cole wants to laugh; isn't it true? Hadn't the finest minds in the tri-county area come together at that old brick Institution, tried to snake-charm his brain into behaving itself? All that ever came of it was further injury: cuts and bruises and tiny delicate fractures from beating his fists against closed doors. Revoked cigarette privileges, suicide attempts. Cole couldn't be persuaded to keep living, not then, and he doesn't pretend to have much interest in it now, but Watts' determination has piqued his curiosity.

“Jim's the best man there is. Maybe the best there ever was.” Watts' voice is hushed and awed, in the way most people's are when they speak of Jim the Illustrious. Admittedly, that's another thing that's made Cole curious; all these idiots going on and on about Jim as if he's the second coming, when history is full of men like him. Panjandrums, charlatans, snake-oil salesmen, pretenders to various thrones. So he can play the banjo and owns a few nicely starched white shirts; that's enough to earn a guy a cult following these days?

“Bullshit,” says Cole.

“Nah.”

“What?”

“You'll see. Just wait, Mac. You'll see real soon.”


	4. Chapter 4

The only thing Cole sees is that he liked Watts a lot better when he had his mouth full, but Cole is exhausted now, ready to pass out at the mere thought of trying to get it up again. He allows Watts to clutch and nuzzle him and yammer more half-intelligible praises to Jim the Great into his ear, and after a while Watts' body softens and stills and he appears to sleep. Cole has to hand it to him, Watts does make an exceptional bed warmer. He's a little human space heater, humming with weird energy and beaming heat from every pore as Cole- lying there, starved for touch and food and warmth and every necessary kindness, sustaining his life somehow through sheer obstinacy-- cozies up to him in turn and takes it all in. All he can do now is consume, endlessly and without hope of being sated. Cole's survival depends on his taking, without question, everything Jim puts in front of him.

When he wakes again, it's to the unaccustomed sight of someone's freckled white ass propped at the foot of his bed; Watts, he remembers. Another one of Jim's possessions. Slutty, talkative, and deeply weird. Sucked Cole's dick last night. Right now he has his shoulders hunched in concentration, the mass of his dark hair held away from them with a Paleolithic-looking ornament made of bone or shell in the shape of a Sarxie with the great pincers of its front legs extended. Cole listens, realizes he can hear Watts' voice. He's talking to himself, far less glibly than he'd spoken to Cole the night before. The peculiar stumbling quality of his monologue suggests he's reading aloud in an unfamiliar language.

“'And Seyshi commanded the Prince to build for her a magnificent palace, with rooms like round white shells, and spires rising to the sky above and the starry heights of our Mother's kingdom. And the Prince, being at all events very practical, refused her. She was wicked, he said, a conscienceless dabbler in unclean arts, and never as long as he lived would he lift so much as one finger to suit her whims.' Wow, you know, he really shouldn't of pissed her off.”

“Watts?”

“Hey. Hey, good morning. Sleep all right?” Turning to face him, Watts offers up his unbalanced and distractingly overbitten grin. Cole attempts to smile in return, doesn't feel as though he's got it quite right. His teeth feel too big for his mouth, his jaw creakingly ponderous to maneuver. His lips are cracked and worn, skin fraying from them in dry papery wisps that shed whenever he moves them.

“Not bad.”

“Well, great.”

“What were you reading?”

“Something Jim lent me. It's a fairy tale, I guess. There's a really handsome prince who gets trapped in a magical shrinking palace and gets smaller and smaller until no one can even see him anymore and everyone who knows him forgets about him.”

“What happens then?”

“Shit, I don't know yet. I bet the prince's sister kills the sorceress and rescues him.” Watts flings the book down on the bed, flings himself down at Cole's side. “It's not real though. Magic. Only in stories.”

“Well no shit.” Watts' face is plainer by daylight, Cole discovers; less moody, less mysterious, marred with freckles like coarse woodgrain. He has dark circles under his eyes, a crooked nose, two chipped front teeth. Cole doesn't understand it, but somehow all these homely parts of him add up to beauty.

“Some people think that Jim knows magic, that he uses it to keep himself looking young. They think he can raise the dead, talk to animals, weird shit like that. Some people think he's a unicorn.” Cole blinks, opens his eyes as wide as he can, examines Watts' face for any sign of irony. Sometimes he really thinks he'd be better off back at the Institution; three hot meals a day, clean sheets, smoking lounge with a television. Not having to share his bed with sexually aggressive space cases.

“A unicorn?”

“Yeah, like from that tapestry in the old days. Where the people hunted the unicorn and caught it and he turned himself into a human to punish them and made them all into his slaves.” Watts still doesn't seem to actually be fucking with him, is leaning into Cole's ever-dwindling allotment of personal space and relating this fantastic garbage with irrepressible earnestness.

“That's ridiculous.”

“How about those giant space lizards? Those are pretty ridiculous too, right?”

“Perfectly explicable. Scientific precedence.” Cole, in spite of himself, reaches towards Watts and touches his stubbled jaw with gentle curiosity. The growth of hair is patchy and uneven and seems to sprout in several directions at once, leading Cole to wonder what kind of disaster would result if Watts tried to grow a beard.

“Oh yeah,” says Watts. “No kidding, Mac.” He's looking at Cole now with genuine interest, his lips pursed in a smug little smile that actually kind of makes Cole want to fuck him.

“Personally, I think if those things are real, everything is real. Unicorns and magic and making dead trees burst into bloom and all that nutty stuff. I think if anyone can do all that, it's Jim.” Watts leans flirtatiously into Cole, draping one bare freckled leg over his and bringing a hand up to tousle his hair.

“That's why you should cheer up, Mac. As long as Jim still wants you, you're OK.”

“I've got other survival strategies.”

“Yeah? None that are any good.” Watts laughs, pinches Cole's cheek; too weird a gesture to be really patronizing. “It's OK. I'm not good at surviving either.”

Cole finds himself, for the next half hour or so, necking pleasantly with Jim's bedwarmer; nothing strenuous, nothing greedy, nothing much below the belt, but satisfying all the same. Watts is comfort, really; a human hot water bottle, a solid and reassuringly dense little ingot of bone and flesh.

Cole wouldn't have noticed Jim coming home to roost, if it weren't for Watts suddenly springing out of bed and throwing himself towards the door; still bare-ass naked, hurtling at Jim like a not particularly well-trained dog welcoming its master home. Jim, heavy-booted, sleet on the shoulders of his coat, embraces Watts fondly; it seems this is nothing out of the ordinary.


	5. Chapter 5

“Afternoon, Jenner. How's my friend there? You been keeping him company?” Jim removes his gloves before reaching down to grab a handful of Watts' ass, to which Watts reacts as if he's been waiting his whole life for just this sort of thing.

“Yeah, daddy.” Watts shivers in Jim's arms, wrapped in the damp sleeves of his coat. Jim slaps his ass briskly, then withdraws from him, giving him a little shove in Cole's direction, and Watts half-falls back into bed, nestles himself once more in Cole's waiting arms. He kisses him, for Jim's benefit, Cole would assume, and Cole opens his mouth for Watts' quick little pointed tongue, allows Watts to maul him pantingly with sloppy and spontaneous affection.

“Come on,” Cole says, when he manages to sneak a stray lungful of air. “I can't-- it's too much, I can't take this. I'm not strong enough yet.”

“No one's asking more of you than you're willing to give, Whitcher.” Jim sits down on the bed, and Watts rises up on his haunches like a begging dog, ready to fetch his pipe and slippers. His dark hair is tousled and damp, his stippled skin shining with sweat; he's as bright as a brook trout, sleek and gleaming as something dipped up from a stream.

“I do like him,” Cole says. “I mean, he's very... sort of pretty, and I do want to, well, fuck him, but I...” Watts, oblivious to Cole's stammering, is unbuttoning Jim's coat, while Jim just sits there all cool and blonde and passive with droplets of water gleaming in the tight cone-shell curls of his hair. If Watts is from a lazy country stream, then Jim was netted from the wild high-waved ocean itself.

“It's all right,” he says magnanimously. “You aren't being forced, you know. I wouldn't force your hand. I like you two together, but I want you to come to him when you're ready. Can you do that, Whitcher?” Cole isn't actually any less bewildered, but he nods, and curls back into the bedclothes while Jim and Watts do something complicated that involves sorting through strewn piles of clothes pulled from the trunk under the window. Cole drowses until suppertime; Watts serves, still naked, hastily pouring soup and hot tea and liquor and handing around slabs of bread and butter. Jim praises him, strokes his hair, feels up his chest with as much vocally lascivious appreciation as if Watts were actually a woman instead of a strangely soft and servile man. Cole can only imagine what the doctors would have made of him; the diagnoses would fly, there would be tests and group therapy and cold sheet packs and reconditioning, and Watts would end up just like Cole; an exoskeleton, empty scaffolding that used to contain a person in need of repair.

Watts disappears after dinner, and there's a great clattering and splashing somewhere nearby that must indicate he's doing the washing-up. Jim reads to Cole from the book of fairy tales, but Cole can't concentrate on the words, barely recognizes them as his native tongue. Everything is strange and muffled and warm, as if Cole's brain had adapted to his icy outdoor torment and is incapable of operating under the balmy conditions inside the cabin.

“You're improving,” Jim tells him. “By leaps and bounds. It's been really lovely witnessing the progress that you've made.”

“I feel like I've heard that before. From people who were almost as insincere as you.” Jim laughs, which actually is sort of a revelation, a strangely moving thing to witness. Jim has the sort of face that looks stunningly handsome no matter what it's doing, Cole is forced to admit; bone structure, he supposes, and the very fetching wrinkles just starting to form at the corners of his eyes.

“I'm a scrupulously honest man, Whitcher. And I have wonders planned for you.”

“Are you going to make me into a... into whatever the fuck he is?”

“Who?”

“Your pretty boy there. Make me debase myself, turn me into a whore.”

“My Jenner isn't a whore. And, strange as it is to say, I didn't have much of a hand in making him what he is. He was much that way when I acquired him.”

“You think I'm pretty?” Watts appears in the kitchen doorway, nude and cock-hipped, looking like Botticelli's Venus with his long damp hair straggling over his white chest and shoulders. He raises a hand to his throat in an exaggerated effeminate gesture and giggles, starting to sway in Cole's direction. “I sure do appreciate that, Mac.”

“And why does he call me that?”

“Just a verbal tic. Sort of charming, isn't it?” Jim's grinning broadly, patting his lap with one hand. The lamp is turned down low; the evening ends predictably, and Cole has the odd feeling of being almost satisfied for the first time in he doesn't remember how long.


End file.
